By Father Felix Medina Pastor of Queen of Peace Parish
We just celebrated the 60th anniversary of the promulgation of Vatican II’s Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (December 4, 1963). However, very few Catholic media outlets — none to my knowledge — have dedicated much time and attention to celebrate and explain the magnificent spiritual milestone and the Christian springtime that Sacrosanctum Concilium set forth in the life of the Catholic Church. It seems as if the path of liturgical conversion and renewal of the Catholics prepared by the saintly popes of the 20th century, charted by Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), and further developed by Pope St. John Paul II has reached a dead end in the constant “liturgical wars” that divide us and bring us nowhere in our faith, hope and charity.
The two devastating world wars of the 20th century unveiled many weaknesses of Catholics’ Christianity even if almost everyone was a Mass attendant. The celebration of the sacraments on behalf of Catholics was already declining during the 1940’s and the 1950’s due to their real lack of “fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy” (SC, 14). That is why Sacrosanctum Concilium received overwhelming support from almost all the Council’s fathers (2147 votes for and 4 against). It was the culmination of a long process of rediscovery of the Christian sources of the liturgy and of actualization in the life of today’s Catholics of the unchanging “treasures” of the Church’s Tradition. The first conciliar Constitution and the liturgical reform that it requested and directed were not a product of the 1960’s and the 1970’s, but stood in continuity with the reforms of Pope St. Pius X, who urged all Catholics to “active participation” in the liturgy in 1903 and to receive Communion more frequently in 1905, and of Pope Pius XII who in 1947 encouraged “all the faithful to participate” in the Eucharist along with the priest (Encyclical Mediator Dei, 86) and started the reform of all the liturgical books with the rites of the Easter Vigil in 1951 and Holy Week in 1955.
Working in close collaboration with Pope St. Paul VI, a post-conciliar commission on the liturgy was appointed to carry out the directives of Vatican II from 1963 to 1975 and produce the new liturgical books for the celebration of all the sacraments and the official prayer of the Church.
Striving towards an authentic participation so that all the baptized may not “be strangers or silent spectators” (SC, 48) in the sacred action, some key “theological” principles of the liturgical reform were, among others: it is the entire Paschal Mystery of Christ, that is, his saving passion, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven that the liturgy celebrates and “makes present,” and not just his death on the Cross (SC, 5); the goal of the liturgy is not only that “God is perfectly glorified” but also that “men are sanctified by signs perceptible to the senses” (SC, 7), that is, the liturgical signs (water, fire, voice, altar, oil, bread, wine, …) need to be sensed by the faithful; the liturgy is the “source and summit” of all the life of the Church (SC, 10), that is, the spirituality of the Catholics needs to be liturgical; “the treasures of the bible are to be opened up more lavishly” so that Catholics may listen and be fed by God’s Word at the Eucharist (SC, 51); the restoration of the adult catechumenate received in stages (SC, 64); and liturgical formation of the faithful is essential to achieve this great renewal (cf. SC, 14-19, 35.3, 43, 105, 115, etc.).
Father Neil X. O’Donoghue, Ph.D., Executive Director for Liturgy to the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference, and Director of Liturgical Programs at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University in Maynooth, Ireland, will be giving three talks on January 16, 17 and 18, at 7 p.m. at Queen of Peace Parish.
It is this last element of liturgical catechesis that has been missing in Vatican II’s path of renewal. Consequently, most of these core elements of the conciliar revival have not been received or even understood by today’s Catholics. The liturgical reform has not been sufficiently implemented in the life of our parishes. We have not received a real liturgical initiation that inserts every aspect of our life in the saving actions of God that take place in the Mass.
Liturgical abuses therefore popped up, and a counter-Vatican II reaction has led some Catholics to fall for a return to the Tridentine rubricism. Already in 1964, Romano Guardini pointed out the difficulty of modern man to place the liturgical act. Without being trained to “live such an act”, beyond intellectual explanations, “the reform of the rite and text will not be of much help” (Liturgy and Liturgical Formation, 5). In 1988, Pope St. John Paul II praised the liturgical reform, but pointed out the work that still needs to be done: “the most urgent task is that of the biblical and liturgical formation of the people of God, both pastors and faithful” (Apostolic Letter Vicesimus Quintus Annus, 15). Pope Francis has taken up this major task of the Church in his last Apostolic Letter Desiderio Desideravi (2022). The path of holiness and true Christian living that the Holy Spirit opened for the Church in Vatican II still needs to be explored and lived out.
To enlighten these issues and others in greater depth, Father Neil X. O’Donoghue, Ph.D., Executive Director for Liturgy to the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference, and Director of Liturgical Programs at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University in Maynooth, Ireland, will be giving three talks on January 16, 17 and 18, at 7 p.m. at Queen of Peace Parish. Everyone is invited!